Convergence towards an NPM programme or different models? Public service employment relations in Italy and France

Abstract

This article analyses the transformations of public service employment relations in Italy and France over the last decades, within the context of a wider administrative reform and in the light of the new public management (NPM) approach. It shows that despite a common administrative tradition, the reform trajectories in the two countries have started to diverge in the early 1980s, and even more since the 1990s. Italy adopted more closely the NPM precepts, especially in the 1997–2007 period, and some of the regulatory difficulties it has experienced are probably connected with the theoretical weaknesses of these precepts. France has been more cautious in moving in this direction, preserving several features typical of its administrative tradition to begin with the special employment status of its public employees, a model which has been labelled as neo-Weberian. In comparative perspective, the article confirms the opportunity to analyse different national reform trajectories, rooted into country-specific legal and institutional traditions, rather than hypothesise universal processes of convergence towards the sole regulatory model represented by the NPM.

Keywords:

• comparative HRM
• employment relations
• France
• Italy
• new public management
• public administration

Acknowledgement

We are indebted to Annette Jobert for suggestions on the French case, and to Diego Coletto for help in collecting data on the Italian case. The Italian Ministero dell' Istruzione, dell' Università e della Ricerca is gratefully acknowledged for financial support.